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HannaWeinberg

“My father told me that in Europe the windows were over a courtyard, and you could hear the slaps and screams and the dishes breaking. ‘What did you do?’ I asked. He closed the shutters. My work with domestic violence has been about opening the shutters.” – HannaWeinberg

The daughter of a scholar and rabbi, and the wife of a scholar and rabbi, Hanna Weinberg spent her life sharing her love of Judaism with her family and the extended Jewish community. Born in 1927 in Germany, Hanna lived for a short time in Lithuania before moving to the United States when her father became a teacher at a Cleveland yeshiva. A few years later, upon founding and leading Ner Israel Rabbinical College, Hanna's father brought the family to Baltimore. In 1945, Hanna married one of the yeshiva's faculty members, Rabbi Yaacov Weinberg, and they had six children, Mathis, Aviva, Miriam, Yehudas, Naomi and Simcha. In addition to her role as a rebbetzin, Hanna worked as a Hebrew teacher, coordinated volunteer services at the Jewish Convalescent Home, and founded Bikur Cholim, a network of volunteers who care for the ill and their families. Dedicated to assisting abused women within the Jewish community, Hanna was been instrumental in opening the eyes of the Jewish communal world to the dangers that women were facing in their own homes. Through her advocacy and lectures to Orthodox and non-Orthodox audiences, Hanna's pioneering work inspired communities across the country to address domestic violence as an urgent item on their communal agendas.